Our Little Pumpkin

Quick post with a picture of Trey Boy in his Halloween Duds. 

Sicko

We’re a bunch of Sicko’s at the Simons’ house. It all seemed to start with Haley last weekend. She seemed a little warm and wasn’t acting herself. Magically, the remainder of our family has managed to come down with something over the past week. I think mine has only been sinus related and it seems like the rest of the family is ‘nearly’ out of the woods. While I won’t say that I’m happy that Haley was sick, I have to admit that it was nice to snuggle up with her on the couch and watch TV. Typically, we spend most of our time trying to keep up with her so a change of pace was nice.

Trey-boy hasn’t seemed to feel bad, but he has the gotten a little hoarse. It’s cute to hear him squeal with a hoarse voice. Laura took him to the doctor earlier this week. The report was that he was a little sick, but it was just a cold.

Been painful with the colds, but at least we’re still a step ahead of the Swine Flu in our household! Laura told me about an article she read where moms are taking their kids to be around other kids with the swine flu so that they can go on and catch the swine flu now. I guess they are thinking that they’d rather go on and get it out of the way. I have to say that those moms must be smoking crack. I couldn’t imagine subjecting my child to a virus that has been known (in rare cases) to kill children. Crazy.

I got some white flooring yesterday to put down in the studio upstairs for some high key images. Even with Haley not feeling 100%, she did a pretty good job of posing for a shot or two. Such a cutie. Can’t wait to get pictures of the kiddos in their Halloween duds.

Busy Weekend – But Something Was Missing…

This past weekend was CRAZY busy.  Laura and her mom took the kiddos to Ohio to see Julie.  Personally, I thought it was pretty brave to drop a 2 year old and a 5 month old into car seats to ride for 8 hours.  More power to them!

I started off Friday night doing one of the more manly things that can be done in Memphis…Texas De Brazil.  What could possibly be more manly than eating bacon wrapped filet off of a sword?  That’s right.  Nothing.

I thought I’d just pass out with a mild case of the meat sweats when I got in.  No dice.  I was up and down most of the night and wasn’t able to get in bed until after midnight.  Which made 6:00 on Saturday morning come REALLY early.  Saturday morning I worked at Bellevue Loves Memphis.  We laid some mulch and cut sod on a baseball field. 

I had to leave BLM a little early because Larry Little and I were riding down to Starkville for the MSU-Florida game.  The game was a blast.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a parking pass this week.  We ended up having to hike about 2 miles to get to the stadium. Literally.  For those familiar with Starkville, we parked a couple hundred yards from the State Trooper station on Hwy 82.  Yep…That far away.

We made it back to Memphis around 1:45 on Sunday morning.  Talk about a long day. 

Church on Sunday, meeting after church and then hung out with a friend for a couple hours Sunday night.  Before I knew it, I was back to work.  Got a few pictures from the weekend, but haven’t had time to get through them yet.  For now, here’s a shot of Trey’s room that was taken a while back.

Tinkerbell?

We got Haley a Tinkerbell costume for Halloween.  We’ve been wearing it around the house some, but of course, before Halloween hits, it is starting to get cold.  Luckily, Laura’s mom bought her a Minnie Mouse costume as well.  We got her to try it on last night.  Low and behold, she went and got it herself tonight, brought it into the sunroom and asked us to help her put it on.  She then proceeded to sit on the couch wearing it for about 2 hours while we all watched some Pooh Bear Pumpkin Halloween movie.  She’s such a mess. 

Good to know that whether it is hot or cold on the 31st, we have it covered from a costume standpoint.

30!!??

How did this happen?  How am I 30 years old? 

I have had an awesome birthday week!  Starting with a weekend away with my honey- we went to Birmingham so Hayden and Richard could attend the Widespread Panic Concert.  Alison and I had a great night eating out and catching up.  The whole weekend was so relaxed and we had fun being together. My Grandma Dee is in town this week so having her here has been an extra treat.  She got to spend extra time with the kids while we were in Birmingham.  When we got back we ate cupcakes at my Mom’s house.  Tuesday, my actual birthday, was the best.  Hayden made me and Haley a HUGE breakfast.  On each stair was a gift card from some of my favorite places (Starbucks, Hobby Lobby, Target, the Movies, etc)- all $30!  I can’t wait to start spending them…fun money! Haley and Trey both took awesome naps, which gave me plenty of down time.  Then, we all went to dinner together at Benihana…where several friends and family were waiting for us!  I was surprised and excited they took the time to come share the evening with me.  All the cards, emails, and phone calls from the day made me feel very special.

I told Hayden on the way home from Birmingham that looking back at my 20’s, I’m pretty proud of all that I accomplished- a degree, starting (and retiring from) my career, getting married, living in two houses, having two kids, and growing closer to Christ…can’t ask for much more!  As I often say, I am definitely the most blessed person I know.  Looks like my 30’s have potential to be as great, if not better, than my 20’s!  (Even if I do lose a ton of "cool points" by wanting to buy a minivan!)

Yardwork and Wide Angle

Fulfilling the promise of posting the photos of the new flower bed.  The pansies are still alive, so either my thumb is semi-green or I accidentally purchased artificial flowers.  But, they seem to be getting a little bigger.  So I’m going with semi-green.

Also, i got a new wide angle lens, which I think I’m going to enjoy.  I haven’t had much of a chance to play with it, but I like it so far.

And a couple of wide angle shots.

Big weekend

Laura has started teaching 7th grade girls Sunday School at Bellevue.  She’s been doing it for about 2 months now.  It makes for tough Sunday mornings for me because she teaches at 8:00.  That means I’ve got to take care of the kiddos solo.  I know that Laura does it EVERY DAY.  But man, it is tough!  It is all worth it though, because Laura’s doing an awesome job as a teacher and she thoroughly enjoys it.

This weekend, 8 of her girls and her co-teacher, Renee, stayed at our house for Genesis weekend.  The weekend was jam-packed.  They started out Saturday around lunch at a nursing home where they played bingo and painted fingernails.  About 4, I joined them at the bowling alley.  That was followed by CiCi’s for dinner.  Which was followed by tie dying shirts.  Which was followed by watching a movie and eating popcorn.  It seemed like everyone had a great time.

I was able to do some yardwork this past week.  On my day off on Thursday, I laid some of the rocks around a new flower bed we were putting in.  I spent some time Saturday morning dropping in the dirt and managed to plant some Shi-Shi Camelias and pansies on Saturday around lunch.  I followed that up with some mulch and checked the box off for completing the flower bed.  We’ve been wanting to do something here for a while because the grass doesn’t grow very well in this area.  I’m pretty pleased with the results (even if I did it myself).  Photos of the house will come later in the week.  For now, here’s a few of the kiddos.

Busy Week

The Honduras trip was cancelled as I mentioned in my previous post.  I still took one day (Thursday) off.  Initially, we didn’t have anything planned for Thursday.  Wednesday was a big day for us.  Laura and the kiddos went to dinner for Whitney Tabb’s birthday.  Not sure exactly where they ate, but I can assume it was some place Mexican based on the doggie bag in the fridge.  I spent Wednesday evening at a Memphis Maroon Club dinner with MSU’s head basketball coach, Rick Stansbury.  I love to hear him talk about the players.  He has a way of making everything so personal.  Whenever he’s done, you really feel like you know the players.

When I got home, we came up with a game plan for Thursday.  Thursday started with me taking a pretty long walk and coming in to the smell of pancakes coming off the griddle.  Haley had Mickey Mouse pancakes – custom made by chef Laura.

Once we got done with breakfast, we packed up and headed off for the zoo.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken off and just stayed at home, so I’ve obviously never been to the zoo at a time like Thursday morning.  Let me say, there is quite a difference between going to the zoo on a Thursday morning and going on a weekend.  Outside of the people that worked at the zoo and a group of senior citizens, I think we were the only people there.  It was nice to let Haley run around without worrying about her getting knocked over by the crowds.  We had a slight meltdown when we left the elephants – Haley really wanted to stay.  But, outside of that, an awesome zoo trip.  The weather was fantastic!

After the zoo, we stopped and bought a pallet of fieldstone.  Laura and I have been wanting to do a flower bed in our front yard that has fieldstone around it.  We’re finally getting to it!  When the kids took naps, Laura and I tag teamed the front yard.  She got the trimmers and worked on the hedges.  I laid rocks around the new bed.  The unfortunate thing is, my wedding ring is missing.  I don’t recall taking it off (and we turned the house upside down).  I’m thinking at this point either it slipped off when I was pulling off my thick leather gloves or I did remove it before I went out and Haley has put it somewhere.  Going to have to see if I can find someone with a metal detector so I can walk around the front yard I guess.  I think I’m more upset about it than Laura.

We had a nice family dinner that included some awesome sweet potato fries.  We followed up dinner with chocolate crème brulee and an episode of the Office.  Bedtime came none too early.  With the busy day we’d had, we were super-tired.